I don’t know if you’re like this, but here’s something weird that I do.
Let’s say I’m going along, not paying attention to something. Like my hair, for example. Then all of a sudden, I realize I need a haircut. Suddenly I feel as if have to get a haircut that very day, though I have ignored it for two years. I can’t explain it, but a sense of urgency sweeps over me, and it means either that I need a haircut or I must escape a burning airplane, hurtling earthward.
There’s no distinction in my tiny little brain.
So I call around frantically to get a hair appointment somewhere, which is always a bad idea, because it’s guaranteed that I’ll notice I need an emergency haircut on a Monday, when salons are closed. Don’t get me started on this Monday-closing tradition, which is so entrenched that it will never change. We’ll get universal health care before we get salons open on Monday, and that’s backwards. Ask any woman if she’d rather have a haircut or a mammogram, and you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, if I can’t get a hair appointment, I usually stop short of taking a scissors to my own hair. I’m already single enough.
Well, to stay on point, I just did the same weird thing with my house.
I have lived here for ten years, but last month, I started looking at the white stucco on my house. It needed repainting, but I hadn’t repainted because I never liked the stucco in the first place. I always knew that it hid lovely tan and brown stones, because I have them on an inside wall. So last month when I saw the stucco, wheels started turning in my head. I thought, if that stucco were gone, my house could look like something out of Wyeth.
I mean Andrew, not the drug company.
Then all of a sudden, I knew the stucco had to come off. That day. If the cost were even close to reasonable, that stucco was history. If not, I’d dig it out myself with a shrimp fork.
So I went inside and started calling around like a crazy person. I managed to raise a stonemason, who came over, gave me an estimate that didn’t require a second mortgage, and told me he would take the stucco off.
“Can you do it right now?” I asked.
“Are you serious?” he answered, because he didn’t know me yet. About my emergency hair and all, and how I get.
So I explained, and the stonemason started the next day, which was a compromise for me. I wrote him a fat check, but it turned out to be the best money I’ve ever spent, if you don’t count my second divorce.
The masons started jackhammering, and beautiful stonework started to show, authentic and old, which is just the look I love, as I am authentic and old myself. Every day brought new progress. The stones were tan, brown, and gold; of all shapes and sizes. I took daily cell phone photos and sent them to my friends, who stopped opening them after day three.
But then I noticed something. Next to the lovely stonework was aluminum siding. And I was pretty sure that Wyeth never painted aluminum sliding.
Let me explain.
When I bought my house, I did notice that its clapboard was unusually nice and white, but I didn’t realize it was aluminum siding. I never knew that aluminum siding could look exactly like clapboard, even embossed with fake-wood grain. I didn’t learn I had aluminum siding until the home inspection, but by then I was already in love with my house.
I overlook everything when I’m in love. A red flag could hit me in the nose, and I’d see only clear blue sky.
Anyway, I pried up a panel of the aluminum siding to see what was underneath. Real wooden clapboard, in need of paint, but crying for sunlight. So you know what happened next. The aluminum siding had to come off. My stonemason said he knew a contractor who could do the job and he’d get me the number.
“Right now?” I asked, but by then he knew me.
So now I have three new workmen at the house, stripping aluminum siding. The clapboard underneath is moldy and grimy, and of course, there are rotten soffits and crumbling fascia, which need to be replaced. I didn’t know what a soffit or a fascia was until yesterday. Now I must have new soffits and fascia. Immediately.
And you know what’s coming next.
Painters.
I can’t wait.